30 If f? 1HEÄJ ß E J ,.." -gt A . I \., .; \ fi, , . ø r i ,t ' $, l! ) \ ') UPTUR.N HE ,\ ' "": ( . - ..", ,"\ -= ...,.,. . - Jt" \ '- f l' --J .& '" .. -..... . M USICAL comedy took a long step toward maturity last week when George Abbott's pro- duction of "Pal Joey" opened at the Ethel Barrymore. I am not optimistic by nature, but it seems to me just pos- sible that the idea of equipping a song- and-dance production with a few living, three-dimensional figures, talking and · behaving like human beings, may no lqnger strike the boys in the business as merely fantastic. I don't expect, of course, that the Shuberts will instantly go all the way with] ohn O'Hara, Rich- ard Rodgers, and Lorenz Hart, and start filling their pretty little operas with tenor heels and coloratura tramps, but I will settle for a good deal less. Practical- ly anything, in fact. "Pal] oey," as you know if you have followed his career in this fortunate magazine, is a very sweet little guy, with the morals of a tomcat and the limited but picturesque vocabulary of a Fifty-second Street taxi-driver. His twin interests in life are mice, a vulgar term for dames, and getting ahead in the night-club racket, presumably so he can catch more and better mice. He is not exactly the boy I would pick for my sister, a young matron now residing in Port Washington, L.I., but he has a strong fascination for me just the same. F or one thing, he is about the most single-minded character in con tempo- rary fiction, and for another he belongs to a strange, violent, and preposterous world about which I can never hear enough. By some miracle of writing and direction, he has been transplanted in- o -7 f <!'- ': \// ;j':;: j;" : " : t j ,f .../ ) .' :.... too I \'\ HTWE,LFTH NIGHT' rzola (Helen Hayes) may be able to make Malvolio (Maurice Evans) thznk she is a boy, but the audience at th.e St. Jan es isn't fooled for a mznute. tact from print to the stage, and I think you ought to go and look at him. There have been some complaints, by the way, about the taste of presenting a musical comedy whose hero is a chaser, a gigolo, and an all-round louse, the New York Times going so far as to employ the . 1 h d " b " CUrIOUS Y ve ement wor sca rouse Apparently a tradition is involved here: an10ral people are all right on the stage so long as they're not accompanied by popular music. I doubt there is much in it. I can't, I'm afraid, go very thorough- ly into the details of the performance at the Barrymore. Mr. Rodgers and Mr. Hart have written some of their best songs, of which I particularly admired a fragrant number called "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewild.ered" and another called "I Could ",\T rite a Book." Gene Kelly, as Joey, has one of the most tax- ing parts I can remember (six songs, about as many dances, and about twice as much dialogue as anybody else), and he does beautifully with it; Vivienne Segal is crisp and expert as a lady who sets him up in his own night club and then thinks better of it; June Havoc, as one of the principal attractions at the crib known as Chez Joey, - almost made me forget her cele brated sister, Miss Lee; Jack Durant combines blackmail and 'acrobatic dancing with the greatest of ease; and Leila Ernst, practically the only virtuous character on view during the evening, is touching and pretty as she moves among the wolves. The dancing, supervised by Robert Alton, is superla- tive, and J lJ Mielziner's sets fascinat- ing in their grisly way. On the opening night, there seemed to be about ten or fifteen minutes in the second act when everybody just milled around, getting nowhere, but this has undoubtedly been repaired by now. I have no other com- plain ts. " M Y SISTER EILEEN," also adapted from a series in T he New Y ork- er, is a fine and generous farce, offering you everything, from artistic Greenwich Village landlords and unemployed pro- fessional football players to quite a large' section of the Brazilian Navy. The early New York experiences of the McKen- ney sisters are probably as familiar to you as the Joey correspondence, so there is no particular point in going into just exactly what takes place at the Biltmore, even if it were possible to reduce that cheerful bedlam to any sort of ration- al synopsis. From the moment the cur- tain goes up, the ghastly basement flat rocked by explosions from a subway be- ing built underneath and embarrassingly